The present invention relates to improvements in fuel dispensers, particularly those featuring video displays in the fuel dispenser to assist in various aspects of fuel dispensing in service station functionalities. It is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,130 to Long that video displays and fuel dispensers can be fed with video signals from a central source in a service station environment. Service station environments are becoming useful for marketing much more than fuel, including the goods usually sold in convenience stores, as well as products sold from quick-serve restaurants, which are increasingly becoming associated with service stations.
The Long patent discloses a way to provide coordinated timing for displaying a video display on a fuel dispenser so that the fuel dispenser starts displaying the video program, typically an advertisement, at its beginning. Thus, the customer is shown a clean, crisp advertisement, and the expense of providing unique video signal feeds for each of the dispensers in the service station is eliminated.
Nonetheless, the functionality of the apparatus disclosed in the Long patent is limited. Once the advertisement is displayed to the customer, it is up to the customer to decide what, if anything, he will do in response. In addition, since the fuel dispenser merely displays the video program as a "dumb feed" without regard to the material being fed, opportunities to use the information in the material are missed. That is, a fuel dispenser that displays an advertisement or other message and is given information as to what the message is that is being displayed could be exploited for further advantage by the service station operator.